Quotes on Questioning

I didn't fight or shame my thoughts, I questioned them, and they stopped shaming me.

It is only by questioning what people take for granted, what people hold to be true, that we can break through the hypnosis of social conditioning.

I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

The only attitude (the only politics--judicial, medical, pedagogical and so forth) I would absolutely condemn is one which, directly or indirectly, cuts off the possibility of an essentially interminable questioning, that is, an effective and thus transforming questioning.

The key to wisdom is this - constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.

Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.

The two ideas are antithetical. Insofar as photography is (or should be) about the world, the photographer counts for little, but insofar as it is the instrument of intrepid, questioning subjectivity, the photographer is all.

To the question, ‘Is the cinema an art?’ my answer is, ‘what does it matter?’... You can make films or you can cultivate a garden. Both have as much claim to being called an art as a poem by Verlaine or a painting by Delacroix… Art is ‘making.’ The art of poetry is the art of making poetry. The art of love is the art of making love... My father never talked to me about art. He could not bear the word.

The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us.

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.

Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.

Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.

The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.

I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.

For it is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Runnng through caverns of darkness.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,_x000D_ _x000D_ Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught_x000D_ _x000D_ In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront_x000D_ _x000D_ Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt.

[W]hen the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.